1.Star Wars over Raumati: I listened twice to the The Day of the Triffids. It was only on the second listen that I connected the sudden blindness of almost the entire population of Triffids with the space weapons that the Cold War powers had put into orbit. While listening to this passage I was walking the dog at night. In a freaky coincidence, a shooting star appeared overhead and plunged down the night-sky towards Wellington. The dog was less impressed. In fact she was bored. She pulled on the leash and whined.

2. Six-fingered fiction: A friend switched me on to Wyndham by recommending The Chrysalids, knowing that I’d like its post-apocalyptic and frontier set-up, and the fact that New Zealand gets a mention.

3. Beware the foliage: another mate pointed out that you’ve got be a real master at story-telling and world-building to generate this amount of tension out of the slow approach of plants.